Anti-demolition alliance says QC is the worst place for urban poor settlers

NEWS l SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

QUEZON CITY, Philippines—Urban poor residents to be evicted for the Quezon City Central Business District hold a protest action against what they call is a 'demolition rampage' of the QC LGU in connivance with the national government in favor of big foreign and local businesses. They burn an effigy of city mayor Herbert Bautista and PNoy to show their anger, as another community in Brgy. Batasan faced demolition teams as the government implements its ‘road reblocking’ scheme..

According to an anti-demolition group, Alyansa Kontra Demolisyon, Quezon City is the worst place to be for a family of urban poor. “QC LGU is a die-hard protector of big businesses in exchange for the taxes they give,” says Estrelieta Bagasbas, the alliance spokesperson. “Since August, we recorded on a weekly basis attempts by private groups and the LGU to demolish urban poor communities in QC. Some attempts did not succeed while hundreds were left homeless.”

After failing to evict residents of Sitio San Roque in the city's North Triangle area, the city government continues its demolition threats to other urban poor settlers in the East Triangle area to expand the eviction process of residents that remain hindrance to the implementation of the Quezon City Central Business District.

Some 50 families along the BIR Road in Brgy. Central fear impending eviction after the office of Taddy Palma, the city's secretary announced its plan to evict the residents. The said community had suffered from two incidents of fire this year, and while there were no formal notices for the residents to leave their places, relocation programs were offered to the fire victims. Hundreds had left the community since the first fire incident in February.

"Mayor Bautista is geared up to maintain QC's title as the investment hub and business capital of the Philippines, at the expense of its urban poor constituents," Carlito Badion, the lead convener of Alyansa Kontra Demolisyon says. According to the city's Urban Poor Affairs Office, the ISFs in QC account for 42 per cent of the population, or some 234,104 families as of August 2010 data.

24,000 urban poor families homeless due to QCCBD
One of the biggest communities in QC with impending demolition is Sitio San Roque in North Triangle. As early as February last year, NHA has started relocating residents to Montalban resettlement sites to jump start the implementation of the 22B dollar-Quezon City Central Business District (QCCBD), which will be the country's biggest and most expensive business district to rival Singapore.

The UP-AyalaLand Technohub is part of the project that by its completion will evict some 24,000 urban poor families from five communities, according to report of CONTRA-CBD, an alliance of affected residents and government employees.

The resistance of the settlers to QCCBD and the relocation program offered by the National Housing Authority has led to a 7-hour stand-off in EDSA in September last year, and a score of casualties on the side of the police and the residents.

Last October 31, two big QC communities faced back-to-back demolition. While residents of North Triangle triumphantly repulsed the demolition threat, some 300 urban poor families in Brgt. Old Balara lost their homes and sources of livelihood. No relocation programs were offered to the victims. Also, a big creekside community in Brgy. Damayang Lagi is scheduled to be demolished in the coming weeks with verbal notice of eviction coming from the LGU.

Slum-free QC
With the biggest poor sector in Metro Manila, the LGU considers "the magnitude of informal settler families (ISF) challenge in QC is huge, and requires the effective collaboration of not only local, but all national agencies with housing and resettlement as mandates, particularly the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council," according to an LGU housing report gathered by AKD.

QC Mayor Herbert Bautista has reportedly initiated a series of workshop with these agencies to formulate local government-national government collaborative mechanisms and work more determinedly toward the vision of a 'Slum-free QC.'

The increasing informal settler population in QC has been encouraged inadvertently by easy access routes to the City, from provinces and the availability if large tracts of unsecured land, as well as small, scattered pockets of undeveloped lands, especially in the city's northern areas.

QC has created Special Task Force on Socialized Housing and Development, under the secretary to the Mayor to maintain an inventory of blighted areas within the city, conduct census survey of informal settlers, prepare development plans for the areas, identify, plan and develop relocation sites, conduct social preparations and undertake the demolition of structures.

LGU-LGU Partnerships
In its report, QC aims to reduce the number of informal settlers through twinning arrangements with provinces and municipalities which can host new resettlement sites for QC's ISFs. In exchange for hosting these sites, the QC-LGU can assign a proportionate percentage of its internal revenue allotments to the receiving LGU.

"In the case of the North Triangle residents, this effort seems to be only in paper as to this date, almost half of the 5,000 families that NHA has relocated came back to San Roque," Badion says. "Scarcity of livelihood sources in the resettlement sites is the basic complaint. The municipal government of Rodriguez has reportedly complained about the influx of relocatees, mostly from QC."

Public-Private Partnerships
"Removing urban blight is a win-win arrangement for private companies as well, who will see their development and property values rise with the removal of slums near project areas," according to the LGU report.

"An ISF-occupied area will allow purchase at depressed values. Once an area is cleared, through the help of the QC government, the property values can rise in multiples, since many occupied areas are in strategic locations of the city," the report says.

"The coming months and years will be very blight for the urban poor of QC, as the LGU eyes for more profit and tax-earnings from big businesses," Badion says. This will be an early reality to some 70,000 families living in the priority areas for clearing as designated by the local government including danger areas, and areas for investment and priority development.

Reference: Carlito Badion, AKD Lead Convener I 09393873736